If, on one side, the Phenicians were separated from the productive Babylonia by the Arabian Desert, on the other side, t n e western portion of the same desert divided them from the no less productive valley of the Nile. In those early times which preceded the rise of Greek civilization, their land trade embraced both regions, and they served as the sole agents of international traffic between the two. Conveniently as their towns were situated for maritime commerce with the Nile, Egyptian jealousy had excluded Phenician vessels not less than those of the Greeks from the mouths of that river, until the reign of Psammetichus (672–618 B.C.); and thus even the merchants of Tyre could then reach Memphis only by means of caravans, employing as their instruments (as I have already observed) the Arabian tribes, alternately plunderers and carriers. Respecting Egypt, as respecting Assyria, since the works of Hekataeus are unfortunately lost, our earliest information is derived from Herodotus, who visited Egypt about two centuries after the reign of Psammetichus, when it formed part of one of the twenty Persian satrapies. The Egyptian marvels and peculiarities which he recounts, are more numerous, as well as more diversified, than the Assyrian, and had the vestiges been effaced as completely in the former as in the latter, his narrative would probably have met with an equal degree of suspicion.